Aesthetization and Greening of Politics and Philosophy:return of the Spatial Practices and Ethos of Tribal Society

"Department of Architecture The affinities between aesthetization and greening of politics and philosophy, and the dreams of restoring the spatial practices and ethos of "closed societies" was extensively studied by Karl R. Popper in Open Society and Its Enemies already in 1943.1 For Popper, the romantic yearning for the innocence and bliss of the closed society characterizes the periods of crisis when the "burden of civilization" is most deeply felt. These are periods of "culture clash," of communication and trade that jeopardize traditional institutions and values, and undermine tribal taboos. Popper reminds that it was such a crisis in the ancient Greek society that once paved the way for the passage from magic to science and philosophy, and initiated a process of enlightenment. The "crisis of civilization" has been the source of both the waves of enlightenment and those of counter-enlightenment. Albert Speer's Spandau: Secret Diaries (1975) attests that aesthetization and greening of politics in the Third Reich was an outcome of the same romantic spirit that Popper disclosed in Plato's work.2 Though Speer outlived all the devastation brought by the pursuit of an ideal society in perfect harmony with nature, he still tries to justify his "romantic protest against civilization" and "that disturbing metropolitan world."3 "The ruthlessness and inhumanity of the regime," says Speer, "went hand in hand with a remarkable feeling for beauty, for the virginal and the unspoiled, although that feeling quite often degenerated into the sentimentality of a postcard idyll . . . Of course the regime's craving for beauty also had to do with Hitler's personal taste, with his hatred for the modern world, his fear of the future. But there was also an unselfish social impulse at work, an effort to reconcile the unavoidable ugliness of the technological world with familiar aesthetic forms, with beauty."